HAST + ZFS + NFS + CARP

[Borja Marcos]

> On 17 Aug 2016, at 09:25, InterNetX - Juergen Gotteswinter <juergen.gotteswinter at internetx.com> wrote:
> try dual split import :D i mean, zpool -f import on 2 machines hooked up
> to the same disk chassis.
> 
> kaboom, really ugly kaboom. thats what is very likely to happen sooner
> or later especially when it comes to homegrown automatism solutions.
> even the commercial parts where much more time/work goes into such
> solutions fail in a regular manner

Well, don’t expect to father children after shooting your balls! ;)

I am not a big fan of such closely coupled solutions. There are quite
some failure modes that can break such a configuration, not just a brainless
“dual split import” as you say :)

Misbehaving software (read, a ZFS bug) can render the pool unusable and, no matter how many
redundant servers you have connected to your chassis, you are toast. Using incremental replication
over a network is much more robust, and it offers a lot of fault isolation. Moreover, you can place the
servers in different buildings, etc.

Networks even offer a more than reasonable protection from electrical problems. Especially if you get
paranoid and use fiber, in which case protection is absolute.



Borja.